[TheEskimo]

>MU was the hub of piracy on the net

I'd like a source for that. I believe TPB is and was in that position. I also believe that rapidshare and all those other sites had a similar amount of pirated content. In general you'd have a mirror of a given file across 3 or so sites which would indicate MU wasn't that far different from those commonly used as mirrors.

>statistical sample of 10,000 random accounts, and correlate ... pirated content

Why? That shows that people downloaded pirated content (which makes the downloaders guilty, not MU). I don't see how that makes MU guilty.

>Anyone with access to the Apache or nginx access logs and the hosted files could do that in their sleep.

uhhhhhh no. Not at all. How the heck to you figure out if a file is actually legal or not? How do you tell if a downloader of a file legitimately owned that file or not? An artist once distributed his album to me via MU after I paid (I wanted it in a different format than was avaliable via automatic download). I was a legal downloader, but if I gave the link to my friend he/she would have downloaded it illegally. To do such a thing they would have to first catagorize all the content, determine the copyright holder, ask the holder if it was a legal download, wait on the copyright holder to look through his/her probably nonexistant logs, and so on. This is not easy.

> idolize this man who's entire history for the last two decades revolves around criminal activities and lawsuits.

His past doesn't matter in this regard. I don't actually see how any of what you posted matters. Sure, there's piracy on MU. That doesn't mean it was illegal since they apparently obeyed the DMCA.

>It's not something that was going to be ignored

Indeed, it looks like the US government isn't ignoring it even though it was likely legal and are using underhanded methods in order to destroy the business, probably due to the lobbying money from the entertainment industry. If the government not following the law to persecute someone who's not breaking the law, and isn't even a citizan of the united states, doesn't make you sick to your stomach then I'm not sure what our government could do to do such a thing.

[briandear]

You really want a source for the fact that his site was a piracy haven? Are you that naïve? The man has a history of criminality, including embezzlement plus the people that are defending him are the same people who complain about Hollywood and the RIAA. If he wasn't facilitating global piracy then Hollywood and the RiAA are irrelevant in any arguments about this case. If he's innocent, he'll have his day in court.

[wooter]

> If he's innocent, he'll have his day in court.

Are you really that naive? I don't want to be dramatic, but take current events into account (Julian Assange, the NDAA, Guantanamo). There is plenty of abuse.

The question is not whether people used Mega Upload for piracy, its whether or not their service complied with the law (DMCA). For example: if I mail narcotics, is the Post Office breaking the law? If I Drop Box a pirated movie to a friend, is Drop Box breaking the law? Plenty of people email files around, do you think Google checks for/blocks any pirated attachments? Youtube? Come on, what song can't you find on youtube uploaded by some random person who added the lyrics. I'd be willing to bet that much more "pirated content" is streamed through youtube than ever was through MU.

What would you think if China extradited Sergey because people are uploading Chinese artists' music to youtube?

The fact that so many used it for pirated content is only a testament to how easy and scalable his file sharing/transferring service was and their effort to protect their user's privacy. Privacy means a lot to quite a bit of people, me included.

[briandear]

If the post office is aware that you are mailing drugs, then yes, they are liable.

[dekz]

You argue as if MU just ignored DMCA requests, they did not.

[res0nat0r]

You obviously haven't read the indictment. They weren't totally ignoring the takedown requests yes, but they were knowingly assisting and profiting off content they knew was copyrighted.

[NonEUCitizen]

ALLEGEDLY

[ttt_]

>> You really want a source for the fact that his site was a piracy haven? Are you that naïve?

IANAL but I figure that for the law to be upheld in an unbiased manner it must be considered naive for all intents and purposes. Simply because that's really not an argument at all, no part in the process can just come up and say "you are being naive not to believe my allegations".

Naivete, common sense, good judgment... those are really just "recourse to infinity" type arguments that only serve the speaker and have no objective meaning whatsoever. They must have no place in applying the law.